This art director’s hope is that everyone in the coming year will make a practice of living a rich contemplative life. Your active life will thank you.
Thoughts from Ed Macko
Director of Branding Ed Macko explores the importance of head and heart in building a brand.
I’m an average guitar player. Some might say very average. But I can play in a support role to almost anyone. Why? Because I have enough basic knowledge about music theory that if someone says to me, “We’ll be playing this is in the key of C,” I know that I’ll be safe playing a […]
As of yesterday, August 24th, Amazon had listed 24,393 books on brand marketing ready for you to read (have fun). Al Reis has 22 Immutable Laws of Branding. Jack Trout emphasizes differential. And I recently saw a brand glossary from a nationally-known, prominent marketing firm that contained more than 50 brand terms and descriptors. Oh […]
Recently, while watching the movie “A Knight’s Tale” with my son for about the 50th time (no kidding), I picked up on something I hadn’t heard before in all the times we’d watched it together. If you don’t know the story, it follows the life of a poor 14th century squire named William Thatcher who […]
To higher education marketing pros, April & May is “yield season.” It’s the culmination of all their marketing and relationship-building efforts to convert a suspect to a prospect to an applicant to an admitted student. Yield is the percentage of admitted students who actually decide to enroll. This is a big deal in enrollment marketing […]
…isn’t taking data from research reports and discovery sessions to come up with creative ideas for a campaign or a tagline. Honestly, that stuff is quite easy. The hardest part is letting go – of forgetting all the old notions, perceptions and sometimes predictable ways a client has communicated in the past; and replace it […]
I just returned from the beach. I have to admit, it’s not a place I always want to go, but it’s always a place I never want to leave. For me, the beach is nature’s ultimate creative expression. It has only three elements – land, sea and sky – yet it delivers an infinite number of […]
How do you know when people are really engaged with your brand? Certainly one way to tell is if they stand in line for hours on end for a chance to buy your latest product. But how do you measure it when you are a small, regional college in rural central Pennsylvania? In 1998, my colleagues […]
Suddenly it’s very quiet. How would you react if 25% of your active customer base got up and left on the same day? Would you become concerned? Perhaps, if you’re a business owner. But not if you’re a college enrollment manager, right? Because it’s commonplace. It’s commencement, and students are leaving in droves right now across […]